Portland, OR

Industry – A Portland Design Firm Building A Bicycle

Community comes first for INDUSTRY, a design firm in Portland, Oregon. Walking around their studio and workspace, you know you’re surrounded by creative people, but more so, people who are intimately tied to the local community. That’s what prompted them to join the Oregon Manifest contest to build a better urban bike.

To keep their work confidential, I simply grabbed a screenshot of The Bike Design Project from the Oregon Manifest website.

As they explained to me in my short studio visit at the start of the roadtrip, they wanted to put the cyclist mindset at the center of their design. But they didn’t want only the avid cyclist, but the consumer who wants to start exploring their neighborhood by bike. How could they design a modern urban bike that would inspire more people to get out and ride.

Portland is considered one of the top U.S. cities for cycling, rated by bicycle as well as travel magazines. It often ranks number one. Part of the reason is that the city dedicates a lot of roadspace, but also mindspace with its focus on “Create-a-Commuter” education programs and safety lessons for low-income locals, according to CNN Travel, which named the city the most bike-friendly in the nation.

Back to the bike design stuff: Industry and Ti Cycles are the team from Portland. We didn’t get to talk to Dave Levy, who founded Ti Cycles, as a means of focusing on constructing lighter, higher-performance frames made from titanium. In addition to bicycle frame and component manufacturing, Ti Cycles Fabrication is also a full-service welding and machine shop, capable of producing all manner of metal products, either from scratch or from customer specifications.

If you’re interested in learning more about the bike design competition, which involves six cities, you can check out the details on the Oregon Manifest site here. On July 25 the bikes are revealed; July 28 the voting begins. Winner announced on August 4. Once the contest competition is complete, we’ll report back in with some details from our visit to INDUSTRY.